Seed of Hope

Caution: Please Read Slowly . . . when He speaks, our hearing is often in direct proportion to our stillness.

In the stillness of my heart, hope comes softly.

Trust moves in slow, like the sun's first slanted rays through my window in the morning.

A giant fire in the sky, it comes over the horizon faithful . . . everyday.

And hope, too, comes - without fail - like a flood of light

 . . . enveloping all my cares, all my troubles, all my fears.

These things of the earth growing strangely dim, in the light. 

The glorious light of hope.

But the ground of my heart must first be stilled before hope's seed can be planted there.

Emptied of the weeds . . . the strivings, the complainings, the selfishness.

These must be uprooted.

Not ignored, not sliced level with the ground, for the root would then remain.

No, they must be uprooted.

Even though it means barrenness.

The trade looks empty at first glance.

But the empty is only part of the process . . . waiting to be filled.

Here is where hope enters. 

Expectation of good from a God who says He is good.

Whose Word is as sure as gold.

And then the surprise.

I turn around, and mercy is there.

Turn the other way, goodness right behind me.

Everywhere I turn, they hem me in.

Kind of like being followed all the days of my life . . . this mercy and goodness never ceasing.

This is my new address.  Fully expecting His goodness and mercy to meet me at every turn.

Like a vagrant, tired of wandering in fear, I drop my bags to make this my home. 

No longer a hope deferred, making the heart sick.

Now it is a longing fulfilled . . . a tree of life.

The stillness of empty soil has accepted the seed of hope . . . salvation springs up from the ground!

And I am Home.

"Bring me into Thy house, O Lord, that goodness and mercy may follow me!  Goodness and mercy have been with me all the days of my life; but when they first come I do not see them; they have to "follow me."  It is only when I have entered Thy house that I truly recognize them.  It is only by the peace of Thy home, in the calm of my spirit, that I know how great have been my benefits." (George Matheson)